By Tom
Quick, what's eight-ninths of twenty-seven? If you solved it like my third graders, you divided the total by the denominator and then multiplied by the numerator. 27 divided by 9 is three; three times eight equals 24. It's pretty easy, right?
Actually, no it isn't. At least not for third graders. For my students, that problem was fairly difficult. Rigorous, if you will. It was a hard lesson to teach, but most of them finally got it.
Our district switched to a new math curriculum this year. It's more rigorous. Way more rigorous. And that's a good thing, according to all the school reform gurus, including Arne Duncan, our new Secretary of Education. He wants to implement high, nation-wide standards in lieu of the piecemeal, state-by-state approach that we're using now. He also thinks we should have a longer school year, which in an astounding display of poor timing, he announced just last week.
Meanwhile, back in my district, we had to cancel summer school this year. Guess why? That's right, as soon as we switch to a tougher math curriculum, we find out that we can't afford to offer summer school for the kids who need more time to learn it.
So here's an idea:
Let's go forward with the national, rigorous standards and curriculum. But let's recognize the fact that not all kids learn at the same speed. Some kids simply need more time to learn difficult ideas. Let's provide federally-funded summer school for the kids who need it. Real summer school; real school taught by real teachers during the summer. And let's get good teachers to teach it, by paying them per diem. It should be six weeks long; the first three weeks after regular school gets out, and the three weeks just before regular school starts up again.
And let's make it clear that summer school isn't an optional thing. If you don't meet the standards by the end of the school year, you get six more weeks of school to meet them. Either that, or you can repeat the whole year.
Secretary Duncan has billions of dollars to spend, courtesy of the federal stimulus package. He's talked about more charter schools, teacher accountability through complicated data systems, and innovative teacher retention programs.
Those are probably all great ideas. But I tend to look at education policy through the lens of my own classroom. And what I see is simply the need for more time to help some of my students meet rigorous math standards.
How many kids are we talking about? Maybe ten percent. Or about one-ninth of my twenty-seven students.
IMO if the school gave such a crummy and lax curriculum BEFORE the change, they should pick up the tab for the “remedial” learning that must take place.
We’ve switched from Everyday Math to Singapore Maths in our homeschool. It took us about two months of intensive work to jump from the END of fourth grade into the BEGINNING of Singapore Maths 4A. The various teaching websites I’ve visited seem to bear out my experience that Singapore is about a year ahead of standard curriculum. (I like to visit teaching websites to see how other people approach curriculum and student achievement! I came to visit from Joanne Jacobs’.)
All that to say…
It shouldn’t matter what grade number is on the front of a workbook. What should make a difference is whether the students are moving on to new levels of mastery in the subject at hand.
I think if your district is unwilling to pay for summer school, it should work a program out whereby the children are able to make that change from one curriculum to the other without sending it all home in a backpack. It just takes some time. Even almost identical curriculum can be worded differently or have different sorts of pictures, and that can throw kids off for a while. :]
And… standardized learning is a bit over-rated. I have a seven-year-old who will be ready for fifth grade math sometime around October. Will he be ready for fifth grade English? Not if he keeps thinking “rundidid” is a verb and saying he “goed” to the store. LOL
And wouldn’t it be great if “summer school” was not seen as a bad thing or a thing that was remedial. How about seeing summer school as an extended opportunity. Again, the system of education and having it start and stop every year around summer seems to be both antiquated and in conflict with researched best practices. And then, I will let that though go to rest.
What really caught me, Tom, was your second-to-the-last paragraph. I am amazed by how often there is something new in education, something that will revolutionize the system. This is amazing because education is not new. Great teachers are not new. It is not like we (they, she, he, those people over there) don’t know how to do it or what works. And, in the end, whichever philosophy or research based standard is adopted, what will really make the difference is whether the action is carried through, supported, and not discontinued at the start of the next school year.
So many brilliant people involved in education. So many capable people who are not educators, but are superb policy makers. So many great teachers. Why does it have to be such an ineffective system every year? And like you, Tom, I always return back to my classroom for it is within there that I can make a difference regardless of what is going on at the capital or across the nation. I can impact Suzy’s life regardless of a policy change.
Teacher instruction influences the rate of delivery, but retention and mastery are not linked to how “fast” a teacher delivers the material. I could read you my whole calculus text over the course of two weeks and that does not mean that my rapid coverage will result in rapid mastery. I think there are numerous during-the-school-year variables that make Tom’s summer school suggestion intriguing.
I think the premise of variation in student learning rates, or rather the false premise that all students CAN learn at the same (assembly line) rate is the central misconception that has led to the construction of ineffective public education and policies (such as the original NCLB mandates) which neglect to acknowledge that humans exist on a bell curve, not in an assembly line. I had a student teacher a while back who, though a nice guy, could not understand why kids didn’t just want to do their homework. He could not understand why someone would not be motivated to study or learn. He didn’t realize that when dealing with adolescents, we as teachers do have an obligation to meet them where they are and guide them toward our goals for them. Some kids enter with much, much further to go. If everyone had the same distance to cover and were starting from the same point, then there might be an argument that some other premise is necessary. While over-individualization is clearly not feasible, acknowledging that some kids will take an extra six weeks to master the mounds of content packed into a school year–that seems reasonable to me considering they are not all starting from the same point upon entry.
Good idea, Tom. I like it. Can you come up with another premise besides variations in student learning rates? I ask that, because research data from Project Follow-Up indicate that teacher instruction influences, if not controls, that rate.